Week 6 – Maya Again and Character Designing
This week was spent learning about character designing and Maya. Having been on the course for 6 weeks at this point, we were allowed to start specializing in pathways, picking between 2D, 3D and stopmotion. Admittedly, I’d pick the 2D pathway, but because the first two weeks of lessons are focused on learning Photoshop as a tool for animation, I’ve chosen to focus on 3D for said two weeks. I’ve never been a fan of Photoshop as a software for animation due to its limited nature, and felt I’d get more out of learning 3D for the time being.
Last time with Maya, I learned how to animate a character called Bonky, a pink blob with limited limbs and movement. This time, we played with Binky, who had full posable limbs and more controls. Kevin, our 3D tutor, taught us to make a walk cycle which you can see above.
Once I got to grips with Maya, I found the process a lot of fun. It’s nice to have something a little more immediate than hand-drawn animation and see it rendered in 3D. What took time to adjust to however were the multiple timelines for each limb – in hand-drawn animation, you draw an image on one layer and move onto the next, only focusing on one timeline. With 3D, each limb moves separately on multiple timelines, so trying to work out the peak of an arm swing to match with the other often threw me off. All-in-all, I think I did alright with my attempt, and look forward to seeing what comes next.
Next, we have a character design I made during Bianca Ansems’ class, a guest lecturer who has storyboarded for shows like The Amazing World of Gumball and The Unstoppable Yellow Yeti. One of the key things I took away from her lesson was the idea of shape design, and how it can inform personality and character.
We were taught about Stanislavski’s seven questions to conceiving a design, giving context to what they’re like and how they might move. The questions involved were: who are they? Where are they? Where do they come from? What is their goal? Why do they have something as a goal? How will they achieve it? And what do they need to overcome to get it?
With my design above, I made a kid called Don, a traveller in the desert. His goal is to travel and see the world, and in order to do so, he has well-worn shoes, plenty of water bottles, and an optimism to seek new adventures (hence the more rounded expressions and shape design).
When I submitted my character above, I got some great feedback – keep the feet flat when rotating and be aware of how other animators would interpret this design if used in a full project.
Next up was Steve’s workshop, which illustrated what it means to design for other people and how one’s own designs could be interpreted.
We started off trying to draw Mickey Mouse from memory (I don’t have a photo of it right now, it’s currently in the studio). That sounds a lot easier than what it was, because Mickey is such an iconic character that almost everyone knows his defining features. Yet, when it came to it, I struggled alot because I didn’t know the specifics or details of Mickey. As it turns out, this exercise was to show us the importance of reference and model sheets, and why animators need them to animate. We were given 1930’s styled Mickey model sheets and asked to draw them again, as seen above. Mickey’s body has a bean-like shape, and ears very specific on the head. In case I ever need to draw Mickey, I feel a little more equipped to do so.
We were then told to create a character on the spot, whether from imagination or drawing someone next to us. I drew Marco, a classmate in the third image (left-most drawing). After that, we were told to pass our drawings around and try to draw someone else’s character from a different angle. I ended up drawing Marco’s clown-like character, which was really enjoyable due to understanding the proportions and simplicity of the design. Lastly, I had to draw someone else’s ghost character with a gun, which can be seen above. What this illustrated was how our designs might be drawn and interpreted by someone else, and why we should take this into account when making a design.
Lastly, we were given a story by Steve, about three characters and told to interpret our own approach to them. I got given a rabbit character called Flopsy, or Bouncious Jumps-a-lot. With a script, I asked Stanislavski’s seven questions to try and understand his character. He’s a bunny who wants to help his friend breathe fire by getting him to bounce so high fire shoots from his mouth. He growls as part of an exercise and nearly gets singed by his friends’ fire. He seems energetic, optimistic and friendly.
Being rubbish at drawing rabbits, I used references to try and understand the rabbit body, giving him floppy ears that would in motion flop dramatically up and down. I emphasised the fur to give the impression of a warm, friendly character, and drew creases in the faces when growling to move the character in the opposite direction. Could I be more original? Of course, I’d imagine I’d like to simply and make him somewhat more cartoony, but for the exercise, he seems suitable.
Character designing is rather fun, if not somewhat difficult for me to come up with. Having spent a rather long time observing people in real life, drawing my friends and tutors and turning them into character designs, I find it hard to draw from original ideas rather than observing. But in the next few weeks, I’d like to keep going and creating various designs a little more foreign to me.